Clair Obscur director says AAA studios would’ve taken 20 years to greenlight Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33’s director is of the opinion that the game would have taken over two decades to get the green light had he pitched it to an AAA studio.

During his latest interview with Pouce Cafe, Guillaume Broche, creative director and CEO of Expedition 33 developer Sandfall Interactive, discussed the struggles of pitching an all-new IP to more established companies.

“In those bigger structures, you generally need to prove yourself first and to be well-placed to have any hope of pitching this kind of project,” Broche said in his May 1 interview.

Everything we know about how Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was born:

As reported by Dexerto, in his latest interview, the director of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 said:

“For this kind of project with a new IP, an original story, original characters, it’s very hard to propose in a bigger company.” He added, “In those bigger structures, you generally need to prove yourself first and to be well-placed to have any hope of pitching this kind of project."

According to the outlet, Broche worked for Ubisoft before he decided to quit and found his own company, Sandfall. In a recent interview with the BBC, he said of his previous position:

"Bored in their job and wanting to do something different."

However, during his time at the French gaming giant, he came up with the idea of his own role-playing game, inspired by his childhood favourite, the classic Japanese series Final Fantasy. The game would later come to be known as Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.

Now, five years later, the game is a hit, having sold one million copies in just three days, the BBC has reported. It also dominated Spotify viral charts with its soundtrack and earned words of appreciation from French President Emmanuel Macron.

“This is the kind of project that, if doable, would have taken me 25 years before being realized, and I don’t have enough patience for that,” Broche said of his decision to move away from AAA game development. “To create a game infused with passion, we needed that ‘bunch of friends’ making a game kind of atmosphere. Having that flexibility and agility is kind of exclusive to indie studios,” he continued.

While his decision to quit bore fruit, Broche acknowledged that it was “not an easy task”, with “very few vacations and nights of sleep for several years.”

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 dropped just this April 24, 2025, after having taken five years to develop.

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